While speaking at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, Hillary Clinton had a meltdown–a health meltdown that is.

She was suffering from the proverbial frog in the throat.

“Wow,” she said, recognizing the power of the cough over her ability to deliver her speech. Clinton’s cough was so strong, she could barely get through her speech, having to take break after break to sip on water and clear her throat. The mainstream media even noticed, with MSNBC covering the coughing meltdown on their website with the headline “Clinton suffers coughing attack during Harlem speech.”

Barely able to get out any words, all the while being interrupted by cough after cough, Clinton was still able to deliver a message to the audience. “Even if you’re young, and you don’t have a powerful job, if you work at that, and you stick with it, you can make a difference,” she said.

When Clinton was finally able to say a word without a cough, she decided to partially quote Dr. Martin Luther King. “You know, to quote Dr. King,” Clinton said, “’The time is always ripe to do right.’ No matter who you are.”

The full quote, from Dr. Martin Luther King, comes from a letter he wrote while a prisoner in a Birmingham, Ala., jail: “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that that the time is ripe to do right.”

King also used part of that same quote in a commencement speech given at Oberlin College. He said: “Without hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do what is right.”

There is a God, our rights come from Him, and the only purpose of government is to protect and secure our God-given rights.

This week, Americans will be paying tribute to this past century’s arguably brightest orator and most dedicated man to individual liberty, Reverend Michael King Jr. (aka Martin Luther King Jr.). While I am almost certain that the good minister from Atlanta, Georgia, would not condone having a day named after him, I do not condone the worthless heaping of accolades by any people or group who co-opt, blindly turn from, or outright despise the Christian minister’s teachings.

Immorality, theft, vandalism, Second Amendment violations, and so-called civil rights were not the basis of this Baptist minister’s philosophies. His mission was to proclaim the Gospel, and his basis was God-given rights, and liberty under Law.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he stated “there are two types of laws: just and unjust.” And that “one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

This smacks of the American Declaration of Independence when our founders declared the English King George was breaking the law when he “combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation… and For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

Pastor King’s letter goes on to quote renowned theologian and early church father Augustine: “an unjust law is no law at all.”

King knew the definition of law. As stated in his letter, “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.” This definition coincides with what the Declaration calls “the laws of nature and natures God.”

At one time in our history, this was widely understood. However, in recent years, Americans have largely forgotten the fact that purported laws draw their efficacy – their validity — from adherence to these two fixed standards. Indeed, in modern times, these two critical standards are not applied by most Americans to the actions of government because these two critical standards are not studied by (or even known to) the people.

Americans desperately need to be reintroduced to the Supreme Law of the Universe (the Bible) and the Supreme Law of the Land (the Constitution).

These standards can’t be applied to the actions of legislatures and governors and judges unless they are known, respected, and defended by the people.

This country, as great as it is, suffers from many sociopolitical diseases, one of which Dr. King coined Schizophrenia when discussing founding documents like the Declaration of Independence. “History reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles,” said King.

He alludes that government has a tendency to praise one concept while malevolently tearing down its foundations. I pray we are not found guilty of allowing this in our own American lives, homes, communities, and halls of justice.

In the words of Declaration signer John Dickenson, “Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness…we claim them form a higher source – from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature.”

Learn more about your Constitution with Jake MacAulay and the Institute on the Constitution and receive your free gift.

In a segment reminiscent of Jesse Watters‘ interviews of Ivy League university students, late night host Jimmy Kimmel sent his “news crew” to the streets in a segment called “Lie Witness News: MLK Day Edition.” The segment was apparently meant to humiliate and embarrass interviewees.

The interviewer said, “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this morning came out endorsing Donald Trump for president. What was your reaction to that?” Surely, they weren’t going to find anyone who believed MLK was still alive. But find folks they did. It’s unclear if they were in on the gig, but their answers were given nonetheless.

“Please don’t,” one interviewee said. “I would be a little nervous. I would think he (MLK) would be the last one to endorse Trump.”

Another pedestrian said, “I figure if he’s going to endorse Donald Trump for president, then maybe he thinks he’ll be a good president.”

The prank continued, with another man saying, “I would be surprised, but, you gotta do what’s better … you know the rich are going to support the rich. And they gotta know how to take care of their money, because Donald Trump, being the money man that he is, will take care of their money.”

Switching gears in an attempt to appear fair to Trump, the interviewer changed the question: “Would you be surprised to know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. never once voted for Barack Obama?”

“Actually, I am,” said another interviewee. “I am surprised. You would think because (MLK is) a minority, that he would wanna vote for Mr. Obama himself.”

The American synonymous with non-violence in the battle for societal change understood there was a difference between peaceful protest and being defenseless.

“… the right to defend one’s home and one’s person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said.

In November 1963, in the wake of the assassination of President Kennedy, King noted that it was the context of the times, and not the weapons, that were at fault for violence.

“By allowing our movie and television screens to teach our children that the hero is one who masters the art of shooting and the technique of killing, by allowing all these developments, we have created an atmosphere in which violence and hatred have become popular pastimes,” King said, according to research from Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson.

King knew that violent times required protection.

“There is nothing in the history that suggests that Martin Luther King felt that guns weren’t useful for self-defense,” said Adam Winkler, UCLA law professor and author of the book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

“If you went to King’s house in 1955 or 1956, there were guns,” said Charles E. Cobb, Jr., author of This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. “When they bombed his house in 1956, his first instinct was to apply for a gun permit.”

Cobb said many of King’s followers “felt their duty was to protect the movement, grab a rifle” and drive away threats.

“They didn’t see any contradiction between saying they were part of the non-violent movement and keeping their weapons clean and ready,” Cobb said.

King’s application for a gun permit was denied. There is a lesson in that for modern America, wrote Tony Oliva on Bullets First.

“If a man like Dr. King wasn’t ‘worthy’ to be given a concealed weapons permit then I submit that as proof that any notion of needing to ask the government for permission before exercising a right is flawed,” oliva wrote. “If a civil rights leader who promotes non-violence and is a national figure who gets death threats constantly and has attempts made on his life does not meet the measure of gaining a (permit) in a state that can arbitrarily deny him his right to keep and bear arms, then the states themselves should have no say in it.

“This is what oppression looks like. This is tyranny. This is also a successful application of gun control. Let gun control activists crow about how the world is safer because Dr. King was disarmed. That’s all gun control can do…disarm the law abiding; the criminals just don’t care because they’re criminals and will carry anyways.”

Some people take umbrage at the fact that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a holiday dedicated to his remembrance while none of our founders, or even presidents, do.

I am not among them. In many ways, MLK epitomizes the founding principles the nation was based on, for they, along with his theological convictions, comprised his core belief system.

As we celebrate the 87th anniversary of his birth, acknowledgement of his contributions to civil rights and peaceful demonstration for just causes is just a portion of what the man represented. His insights on freedom, work, selflessness and morality apply equally to all Americans, regardless of political orientation, race or creed.

Perhaps that was the key to his enduring legacy – not just that he advanced civil rights, but that he taught and expounded precepts that transcended the great social divide of his time. Perhaps there is as much for us to learn from those teachings in transcending and bridging the divisions of our time.

To him, everything revolved around freedom. “I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom,” King said. “Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.”

This may seem ostensibly a self-evident truth, but the concept is increasingly foreign to too many of us as we look continually to government for solutions, at the expense of individual liberty to choose and act.

He also stated, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” When we realize much of what’s done in the name of government is oppressive to freedom, it’s increasingly evident as an electorate we must rise up in opposition to freedom-inhibiting laws and regulations, and demand redress.

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom,” King declared on another occasion. Individual and universal freedom was everything to him, without regard to ethnicity or other contradistinction. He advocated freedom, as opposed to government programs that diminish the freedom to build, achieve, to be rewarded for those achievements, and to succeed.

He often talked about how critical it was for all Americans to have a job. To him, a good job was ennobling and built character. “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence,” King said. A working society was a free society, for without work, one becomes the ward of the state and loses their individual freedom to become and do.

He was critical of those whose entire focus was on themselves and their own self-interests. And he made no distinction between the personal and the private, the political and the individual. Said King, “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.” And as if to underscore this notion, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” Clearly those who engage in identity politics for their personal aggrandizement are not looking at the greater good for society and America.

He always emphasized doing, and acting on principles. It wasn’t enough to echo the refrains of freedom; one had to work for them. And at times he seemed to echo the sentiments of Edmund Burke, the English philosopher who said, “All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

King’s version was, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” How can one claim ownership of great precepts, and not be willing to act on them?

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Clearly, to King, all lives matter.

The Rev. King was a highly principled man, driven by truths and fundamental values. He referred often to those values. “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” Some of those values were the very foundational principles upon which the nation was founded, that he found lacking in their application to all American equally.

He was not a perfect man. None are. Yet he advanced a commitment to “moral foundations” and “spiritual control” which he saw as critical for society as a whole, and can only be accomplished by each of us dong our part.

I think he would concur with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a great student of history, who declared, “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”

Although an icon of the civil rights movement, King was not single-dimensional. He called upon all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religious convictions, or socio-economic status to do their part for the benefit of society and the country. It’s wholly fitting to have a holiday dedicated to his memory and teachings. And the nation would be better off if more effort were expended in adherence to his precepts.